Aheli Moitra
Of late, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (SS Khaplang) has stepped up its violent activities. It has launched a series of attacks on the Indian army/paramilitary in Manipur and Nagaland. Given its unenviable status as a “banned” organisation, and the extensive nature of the Government’s multiple intelligence networks operating in the region, these must have presented frustrating times for the State.
The State, of course, has so much fire power and diplomatic craft that it may seem the NSCN (K) has made an irrational choice in calling the ceasefire off—the public at large, represented by its civil society bodies, want peace too. It is a choice made after irrational responses from the State towards the issues the Naga people have raised over the past century. In this context, it would be worth our while to understand what ceasefires have meant, and what peace within the confines of a ceasefire means.
Recently, on the 52nd eve of the first ever ceasefire signed between the Government of India and the Naga National Council/Federal Government of Nagaland on September 6, 1964, Gen. (Retd.) Thinuoselie M. Keyho, President of the NNC, made some astute observations.
While the GoI unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire when the Nagas refused to relent to constitutional and legal conditions, it then signed separate ceasefires with multiple Naga groups and held peace talks with just one. In the meantime, efforts at peace failed, he said, because the Indians “were too proud and thought highly of themselves while they did not consider the Nagas as human beings and ill treated us. There was no sincerity nor do they seriously think it is necessary on their part to solve the issue, but for the time being just making things easy to make Nagas lazy and weaken us in order to control us, using divisive policy and delaying tactic.”
When the NSCN (K) abrogated the ceasefire in March 2015, it had something similar to say. 14 years of ceasefire with the GoI had been a “psychological ploy” to “undermine and demoralise the patriotic spirit and fervour of the Nagas.” Sovereignty and peace are interlinked for the Naga struggle, which were never addressed, with empty renewal of ceasefires year after year.
The past 19 years of the Indo-Naga “peace process” can be defined in the words of political scientist Ranabir Samaddar as an experiment in the “science of governing conflicts,” an area India skilled itself in, having learnt from its colonial master. Everything was designed to suit the growth of a State, not people. Thus, governance became key to management of self determination aspirations—central schemes were introduced, government departments to cater to the region were created, the market was let loose, monetary schemes were offered for “surrender and rehabilitation” of underground cadres, large scale loot of natural resources from the region were arranged for, a corrupt government that has nothing to govern was put in place with a begging bowl in hand. Militarisation in the name of “security” continued, justice issues were never discussed, legality and secrecy became core aspects of the peace process, and elections, however skewered, continued.
In its glorious condescension of the process, one day a “Christmas gift” was offered, another day an “alternative arrangement” was considered while “reorganisation” of state boundaries (an imposed colonial construct anyway) was firmly dismissed in the name of federalism. While the Constitution of India changed otherwise to accommodate the changing times, constitutionality was imposed like a monolith on the “peace process.”
The civil society was systematically disempowered—co-opted and made to speak the (confined) language of the “peace process,” it became increasingly removed from the issues of new injustices that crept into Naga society. The absence of transparency and lack of accountability to, and dialogue with, the masses, lent to the fragility that Naga civil organisations face today.
The era saw little spaces for justice and peace created while the language of peace was amply used to keep up with the ceasefire(s). More than half a century, one would say, is a good time to start talking outside the shackles of held knowledge and constitutionality. It would release the inherent prejudices held by all parties to the peace process and begin the process of transforming the situation into the sharing and caring model everyone wants it to be—it is time to make the process People centric instead of State centric that has continued to produce cyclic violence in the region despite ardent attempts by all sides. It is time to break out of these politics of irrationality.
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